


Check Yes or No

by rebeccaofsbfarm



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Love Notes, M/M, SO DON'T COME FOR ME, Songfic, chris hates raisins, idk that's a thing in the story okay, personally i like raisins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24783445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebeccaofsbfarm/pseuds/rebeccaofsbfarm
Summary: Eddie finds a note in Christopher's backpack and realizes that his son has a girlfriend. When he tells Buck, he has a reaction Eddie didn't anticipate.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 522





	Check Yes or No

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Katie because she and I end up in country music death spirals and end up writing lots of songfic. I've been in a 90s country mood so this was bound to happen.
> 
> Song is Check Yes or No by George Strait. And if you know the song you know how grossly fluffy this is about to be. I do not apologize.

“Well, that’s as good as it’s going to get,” Eddie says to the empty kitchen as he finishes a simple stir fry on the stove. He wouldn’t take Christopher’s complaints about his cooking too seriously if he didn’t also have to eat what he cooked, and he knows Christopher is right. He plates the food, dropping forks onto the plates and carrying them out to the table.

Chris had been diligent enough to finish his homework before dinner, but in his excitement to be done, he rushed off without packing up his backpack. Eddie sets the plates on the clean edge of the table and shuffles the papers into Christopher’s backpack, reminding himself to correct him later. As he shoves the last of the papers into the bag, he spots a torn-up piece of paper that doesn’t look like homework.

Picking it up off the table, he reads over it as he absently calls out to Christopher that dinner is ready. He chuckles to himself as he hears Chris slide into his chair at the end of the table.

“Hey Chris, who’s Matilda?”

He watches as Christopher’s cheeks turn pink, but he doesn’t seem ashamed. He grabs his fork and begins to pick around certain vegetables in the stir fry, before he finally admits, “She’s my girlfriend.”

“Were you going to tell me you had a girlfriend?” Eddie smiles, sliding into his own seat. “My son’s first girlfriend and I have to find out from a note.”

“How do you know she’s the first?” Chris smirks, finally bringing his fork to his mouth experimentally. “I don’t know. She’s nice. Sometimes she offers to hold my books when I have too much to carry.”

“That’s very nice of her.” Eddie brings his own fork to his mouth and makes a show of swallowing his food, even though it isn’t very good. He’s been thinking about dating again, and he notes that whoever he dates better be a decent cook, otherwise he and Chris are bound for a life of gastrointestinal misery. “Is it serious?”

He’s teasing, but Chris doesn’t know that, so he answers very seriously, “She invited me to her birthday party and when I asked her what she wanted she said she wants me to kiss her cheek. I don’t know if I will, but it was nice of her to say.”

“Well Chris, kisses are special,” he tells him, relaying what little wisdom he has on the subject. “Make sure you’ve thought long and hard before you kiss somebody because you can’t take it back.”

“I know dad,” he huffs, before pursing his face and taking another bite of his dinner. Eddie tries to fake it, taking a bite of his own, but he must have used an obscene amount of salt because it’s basically inedible.

“Should I order us a pizza?” he finally concedes, and Christopher’s face lights up. “Go on, I’ll call you when it’s here.”

He snickers as Chris heads back to his bedroom to play video games, wondering how his kid grew up so fast.

* * *

Buck texted him saying that he didn’t want to cook anything after work and Eddie told him they’d had pizza and he was welcome to leftovers if he wanted to stop by. When he arrives, he comes touting a six-pack, and Eddie joins him in the kitchen, plating slices of pizza as Buck opens two beers.

“Is Chris asleep?” Buck asks, motioning with the neck of the bottle in his hands. Eddie nods, then directs him with his forehead to head into the living room.

“I have a funny story about Chris actually,” Eddie laughs as he drops onto the sofa. They trade out beers and pizza, and Buck begins to eat as he waits for Eddie to continue. “He has a girlfriend.”

“What?! Isn’t he kind of young for that?”

Eddie shrugs, “It’s not like they’re having sex Buck. He’s not even sure if he wants to kiss her on the cheek. I think it’ll be fine.”

“Oof. Cheek kisses are like an entry drug. But good for Chris! What’s her name?”

“Matilda,” Eddie answers, and Buck seems to tally something in his head.

“I’ve dated…three Matildas. That I know of anyway,” he says, finishing off his second slice of pizza. He shoves his plate onto the coffee table and settles into his beer. “One of them went by Mattie though, so I couldn’t do it. More than once, anyway.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, finishing his own pizza, “You know he didn’t even tell me. I thought we were working on that whole ‘you can come to me with anything’ business, but I had to find out by finding a note in his backpack.”

“What did it say?” Buck asks, and Eddie holds up a finger, walking over to where Christopher’s backpack sits next to the door. He shuffles through it for a second, then returns with the note and hands it to Buck.

“God, it’s so simple when you’re a kid isn’t it?” Buck muses, but he smiles shyly around the lip of the bottle. “And then you get to be a grown up and you lose your nerve.”

“Buck, if I’m not mistaken, you’re about 53% reckless courage, so forgive me if I don’t believe you can be lacking in _nerve_ ,” Eddie smiles, and he realizes how late it is and how tired he’s gotten. Buck’s probably tired too, having just finished a shift. They lean against each other on the couch, and Buck’s warmth radiates through his skin and then settles in his chest. He wonders what it would be like to come home from every shift feeling this same warmth and companionship. He really should get back into dating.

But he likes his life. He likes movie nights with Buck and Chris, and he likes when Buck helps Chris makes pancakes when he stays the night, and he likes it when Buck shows them his favorite camping spot and insists on carrying Christopher on his back the whole way so he can see everything. If he starts dating, there won’t be time for all of that, and he pales at the idea of having less of it, less of Buck, in his life.

He swears Buck had half a beer when he last looked, but he makes a point of chugging it to the finish, and he sighs before asking, “Eds, do you have a pen?”

“Yeah, in the kitchen junk drawer. Want me to get it?” he asks, motioning to stand, but Buck spreads a firm hand over his knee and pushes him down. He stills, rubbing his thumb at the crux of Eddie’s knee, before standing.

“I’ve got it.”

When he returns, he has a fresh beer and is concealing something in his hand. He seems uncertain, and when he sits next to Eddie, his back is stiff, like he’s ready to bolt.

“Did you find a pen?”

Buck loosens his grip, and Eddie can see a folded slip of paper between his fingers. His heart skips a beat, and his mind races as he realizes what Buck is about to do. He wants to stop him, fold his hand around Buck’s and close his fist so they never know what could have come of it, but then he thinks of holding his hand around Buck’s, wrapping his arms around him, feeling his lips against his own, and suddenly he needs to see what Buck is obscuring in his palm.

“I did, yeah,” Buck hedges, hesitating before dropping the note unceremoniously into Eddie’s lap.

Eddie looks down at the note, then back up at Buck. “Should I open it?”

“Please,” Buck says, his voice barely a whisper. Eddie nods, closing the paper in his hands before unfolding it to see what it says.

His heart stutters when he sees Buck’s messy handwriting, scanning his words in a panic before reading them again, this time memorizing every word.

As he reads over the words a final time, he reaches out, searching blindly for Buck’s hand until he finds it, tangling their fingers together and bringing them to his mouth so he can kiss each of Buck’s knuckles. He faces him, and Buck’s mouth is turned up at the corners, cautiously optimistic.

“You know, it’s funny. I was just telling Chris earlier that kisses are special. You have to think long and hard before you kiss someone, because once you do, you can’t take it back,” he echoes his words from earlier. “But I have thought long and hard about kissing you, and I have no intention of taking it back.”

Buck lets out a long breath, releasing the tension in his shoulders. He leans forward, and Eddie meets him, reaching up to settle his fingertips against the stubble on Buck's cheek. He chuckles, running his fingers across the coarse hair as his thumb grazes over the seam of Buck’s lips. They part, and he covers them with his own, smiling at first, until he is lost in the feeling of Buck’s lips against his, Buck’s steadying himself with his hands against Eddie's biceps. He knows he wants more, can’t wait to continue, but he forces them to the surface, coming up for air.

“Shit,” Buck mutters, and it’s so honest that a laugh escapes from his chest. Buck looks taken aback, but then he sees the smile of anticipation on Eddie's face, and he chuckles. Eddie is holding his hand against Buck’s chest now, stalling him as he catches his breath, wanting just one more thing before they continue.

“Mind if I borrow that pen?”

* * *

When Chris had told him at eleven o’clock that night that he had forgotten he needed to bring raisins to school, Eddie had a few questions.

“Chris, you don’t even like raisins. Why would you offer to bring them in for the class?”

“It’s for our Iditarod class project Dad. We’re making gorp. It’s like trail mix,” he finishes packing the rest of his backpack. “They had a list of all the ingredients, and I felt bad for the raisins because nobody wanted to pick them. So I did.”

“Buck!” he calls out to his husband, who is currently loading the dishwasher. “I have to run to the store. Think you can handle bedtime?”

He comes out with a dish rag slung over his shoulder, drawing Eddie’s attention to his biceps and the way his muscle shirt curves around them. He never knew something could be so domestic and sexy at the same time, but Buck is full of interesting dichotomies that he’s is still discovering every day.

“Why do you need to go to the store?” he asks, looking from Eddie to Christopher.

“Raisins,” they answer in unison.

“But nobody—”

“I know,” Eddie finishes, shoving his shoes on and grabbing his keys. “Take it up with the boy.”

He returns with the biggest box of raisins at the store, frustrated by the knowledge that every child, including his son, will be picking them out of their trail mix come tomorrow. When he comes in, the house is quiet and the lights are off, which means that Christopher has successfully been put to bed.

He puts the raisins in Chris’s backpack before heading down the hallway to say goodnight. He leans into the room and finds Christopher reading in bed. Immediately he defends himself. “Buck said ten more minutes.”

“Okay,” Eddie acquiesces, because there are worse things a kid can do than read. “But then you have to turn the light off and get some sleep. Promise?”

Christopher nods, and Eddie blows him a kiss from the doorway, closing the door behind him. He crosses the hallway to his bedroom, pleased to find Buck tucked beneath his duvet. He’s reading too, but when he sees Eddie, he stretches languidly, like a sated tom cat.

“Did you get the raisins?” he asks, marking his place and setting the book aside.

“In his backpack. Did he tell you—”

“He did,” Buck smiles, then hesitates before finishing. “We have a good kid Eddie. Imagine being kind to _raisins_ of all things.”

Eddie doesn’t feel the need to correct him, because Christopher is no longer his alone. If he’s honest, Chris has been theirs’ since the moment Buck entered his life. He strips off his clothes, pretending not to notice the way Buck’s eyes rake over him, and pulls on his pajama shorts. He’s taken to sleeping without a shirt after Buck told him he likes to feel his heartbeat as he falls asleep.

He heads toward the bathroom to brush his teeth, and stops in his tracks. On the wall next to the door frame is a shadow box, one that wasn’t there earlier. He hears the floorboard creaks as Buck gets out of bed and comes toward him, but he takes a step forward, reaching out to touch the frame.

“You kept it?”

Inside the box is a piece of lined notebook paper, ripped like it had come off the corner of a used scrap of paper, and scrawled across it in Buck’s handwriting are the words that had started at all.

“Do you stand by your answer?” Buck asks as he gathers him in his arms from behind, letting his fingers trace the curve of Eddie’s hips. “Because I can give you a redo. Right here right now.”

Beneath the words are two boxes labelled YES and NO, and he remembers checking the box as if it were yesterday. He remembers the feeling of kissing Buck for the first time and the anticipation of doing it again. It’s not unlike what he feels now, with Buck’s lips pressing against his neck, pulling up into a smile against his skin.

Eddie reaches out and hovers his index finger over the checkbox, not wanting to leave a smudge against the glass. Buck watches over his shoulder as he poises his finger in front of the box marked YES and confirms his answer again.


End file.
